A colleague and I wrote a big long letter to the Canadian gov't about how terrible direct-to-cell satellites are for astronomy (radio and optical). And I found out today that national groups (CASCA *and* ACURA) both officially endorsed it, and I'll find out tomorrow if CAP also endorses it.
I don't really think it'll actually help, but it's quite gratifying to finally have some official backing while yelling at gov't departments about satellites.
@sundogplanets Genuine question. What about Garmin or Apple devices, and their respective constellations? Are they as harmful? So ensuring when in the backcountry.
@jeffhokit GPS only has like 30 satellites and they're on super high orbits, they are not the problem. There are lots of internet services from geosynchronous orbit, those are super high and there aren't many sats, those are also not the problem.
The problem, is tens of thousands of huge satellites that are thrown away every few years by dumping them into Earth's atmosphere.
@sundogplanets I think @jeffhokit is probably referring to Garmin satellite communicators (e.g. inReach). I believe they use the Iridium constellation. It looks like iphones use the Globalstar constellation. Both of those operate in low Earth orbit (~780 km and ~870 km, respectively, according to Wikipedia).
@internic
My understanding is that while there are issues with systems like Iridium, it’s more than twice as high and has like 1% as many satellites, so it’s on an altogether different scale.
@sundogplanets @jeffhokit